These were all taken at Buffalo Creek Golf Course, home of the 15 foot alligator.
Yes I was playing (sorta). No I’m not very good. Yes I kept getting distracted by alligator hunting. No I wasn’t allowed to drive the golf cart in the ponds or through the sand pits (Seemingly that’s frowned upon on golf courses. Who knew!).
I would have loved to get closer to the Ospreys but there was a stonking great alligator in the pond in front of me, hence the 300mm long zoom plus cropping.
I got a birdie on this hole. A Heron to be precise.Osprey. Would have loved to get closer but, you know, alligators.Another Heron looking pretty beside the flowers.Spoonbill and another bird.Cute Black Vulture.Cormorant
As an Olympic Athlete myself I often award myself a medal for just getting through the daily routines of the day. Yeah all right, I often award myself a cookie but come on, who wouldn’t rather have a cookie than a gold medal?
Cookies – better than a medal
Olympic athlete? Who are you kidding you may well ask.
Well I think the day to day routines we all follow deserve to be awarded (with cookies). For instance the Bed Making Hammer Throw – it takes a lot of effort to throw that duvet back on the bed and fluff those pillows. The Reversing the Car out of the Garage Sprint whilst missing your son’s car sitting directly behind yours on the driveway deserves at least a pair of sunglasses cookies. Not forgetting the Supermarket Slalom and Don’t Step On The Dog’s Toys Hurdles (nearly as bad as when you have small children in the house who still play with lego hurdles)
Special sports shoes are needed for Olympic Athletes
Anyway this week I decided to kick-start my static weight loss with a daily dose of exercise, apart from the Olympic Events that I daily compete in as mentioned above. Monday I went back to the gym for the first time in months. I’m still suffering. The only good thing about the gym is that it shows you where all your muscles are. Muscles that you didn’t even know you have…. inside your elbow has a muscle. No, really, it does. I can’t straighten my arms anymore. Tuesday I went to Zumba. No problem normally, but after the gym on Monday EVERYTHING was too hard to do. My morning Zumba class is usually pretty good as I’m the youngest person there but yesterday all the old biddies were totally funking it up and I was barely surviving in the back row. Today is swimming. Shoot me now. It would be kinder in the long run.
A fellow blogger has a really good post about Pizza Olympics – check out his post at Ben’s Bitter Blog here https://bensbitterblog.com/2016/04/17/pizzalympics/. I totally deny stealing his idea. Plus I can probably bribe him with pizza and he won’t sue.
I wrote a post about hawks (or sock monkeys as we like to call them here) some time ago – this one https://alba1047.wordpress.com/2015/01/30/sock-monkeys-and-giant-mice/ but this time there’s pictures! I am privileged to have a backyard that backs onto woods and I just love sitting outside and listening to all the critters and varmits and birds (is a bird a critter or varmit?) Last year I discovered that the screeching noise I kept hearing was a young hawk calling for it’s mother (or father, not sure who does the feeding). Anyway this year not only is the screeching back but I managed to capture both the young bird and the mother (father?)
Juvenile Red Tailed HawkJuvenile Red-Tailed Hawk
The first two are of the young one. It was just sitting on the grass verge on my street as I was driving in, so luckily I always have my compact camera in my handbag and I managed to snap off these two shots out the car window.
Then when I got to my house the parent flew past me and landed on a tree in my neighbours garden. I hope they didn’t mind me walking over their grass to grab a shot with my DSLR but it was too good a chance to miss. This one is full zoom (300mm) on my Pentax K5.
Adult Red-Tailed Hawk
I’m hoping to grab a shot of the owl that lives in the woods next. I did catch it once but the photo was terrible. It was only good enough to identify it as a Barred Owl. The owls make absolutely NO noise as they fly past. Their wing spans must be at least 4 feet, they are amazing birds.
I don’t like to kill animals unneccesarily so being the kind soul that I am I was giving the frog the benefit of the doubt. Why it thought that under the swing cushion would be a good place to live I don’t know. 5 times I sort of poked it with a stick and brushed it along till it jumped off the deck to the grass 10feet below. When it came back for the 3rd time I did wonder if I should kiss it, just in case, you know…. But before I could pucker up and say “SMOOCH ME BABY!” it hopped away again *sigh* Anyway today I lifted the cushion up as always, coz I imagine there’s nothing worse than squishing a frog with my fat arse (even under a cushion), and lo and behold there’s two of them! Mr and Mrs Frog. Maybe that’s why he didn’t want a snog. I don’t mind sharing my perfect reading seat with a frog (or two) but what happens if they have baby froglets? What happens if dawg sees them and eats them? I think frogs have fangs don’t they? They’re like mini-vampires with big smiles. That’s why we only every see them smiling, we never see the fangs till it’s TOO LATE!
A perfect reading seat – or a honeymoon destination for frogs?
Frog inspection is necessary before sitting down with a book.
The original handsome prince
One quickly turned into two. You wonder if (in frog language) he’s going “Come with me baby, I’ll show you the perfect place to live. We’re going up in the world now!”
Mr and Mrs Frog
Yes, I know frogs don’t have froglets, they have tadpoles, and tadpoles live in water, but maybe this is just the honeymoon destination… maybe the hot-tub will be overrun by tadpoles next. I hope not. I just got it fixed!
A better frog picture from last year
This last photograph was when I brought the hibiscus bush inside for the winter and a frog hitched a ride. I would have quite happily let him live out the winter on the bush except that it was obviously too hot in the house to hibernate so he started hopping around the living room. He had to go. I carefully buried him (alive) in mulch along the side of the house. Maybe this one is the grandfather of the one currently inhabiting my swing?
The dragon-fly is dancing,—
Is on the water glancing,
She flits about with nimble wing,
The flickering, fluttering, restless thing.
~Heinrich Heine, “Die Libelle” (The Dragonfly)
Dear America,
Alba1047 